HTNG Takes on Challenges of Migrating Hotel Systems to the Cloud

| July 29, 2014

Hotel Technology Next Generation (HTNG) announced a new effort that will generate resources to guide the rapidly growing number of hoteliers and vendors who are moving technology systems above property. This collaborative effort among hoteliers and vendors, most of whom have real-life experience migrating to the cloud, will help hotel companies minimize risk by providing guidelines to benefit hotels, hotel brands, application providers, cloud service providers and others.

Companies in many industries are moving to the cloud to gain benefits such as greater reliability, cost savings and a reduction of on-property IT support staff. In recent years, hospitality companies have been increasingly making this transition as well. However, doing so has led to many new challenges. These challenges are often discovered only after the fact, sometimes after days of downtime for critical systems.

The HTNG Above Property Systems Workgroup will create a framework document, including a list of best practices and definitions of terms that business and technical leaders need to understand. Additional materials from the workgroup will include documentation of views among the various parties (hotels, brands, application providers, cloud service providers, etc.) on critical issues such as data ownership, security, termination rights and support. Hotels will be able to use the framework to ensure more effective interoperability between cloud-based systems, at both business (relationship and contracting) and technical levels.